Sporadic problem with url based logon

I have an application that uses credentials in the url as in:

http://server1.myco.com/mydb.nsf/myagent?openagent&username=joe+schmoe/abc&password=abc123&customvar=xyz&customvar2=123&

Most of the time this works but some of the time the requestor is presented with a logon screen. We are using multi-server session based authentication.

Has anyone else seen this.

Thanks!!

Rob